Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl....

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

I love audio books. In the author’s notes on the audio version of Joe Hill’s NOS4A2, he talks about how the first stories we learn are read to us. I listen to audio books when I’m in the car, shopping, and playing Candy Crush.

In typical book blogger fashion, I already have a tbr shelf just for audio books. Reviewing them is a bit more difficult, because I don’t take notes and I don’t always know how to spell the characters names. So these reviews will be a little different from my book reviews.

Story

I resisted this series for a long time. Cyborgs, robots? Not usually my thing. I don’t even know why I have this book prejudice- I really enjoyed Robopocalypse and Tears in Rain, and several other books featuring robots. Not even the fact that some of my good blogger friends loved this book seemed to sway me. If anything, it put me off reading Cinder because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it as much as they had. But the it remained on my book radar, and I meant to quietly read it in the future.

When Felicia @ The Geeky Book Blogger told me that Marissa Meyer was matching Readathon donations for bloggers who were reading for charity this past April, I resolved to finally get off my ass and read her book. And then Meyer tweeted that she would donate a certain amount to charity for anyone who read one of her books during readathon. I immediately scrapped my previous Readathon plans and downloaded Cinder from Audible.

And guess what? I really liked it! The characters were interesting and complex, the world building impressive, tons of action that never felt forced or confused, sweet romance, aliens and robots, and underlying themes of racism and acceptance (of others and of ones’ self). I would be mad at myself for putting this book off for so long, but my Readathon experience was all the better for listening to such an engaging audio book. I will definitely be continuing with this series, the sooner the better!

Narrator

Rebecca Soler was a new to me narrator, but I really liked her. Looking at the other books she’s narrated on Audible, I can see that this series won’t be the only books I’ll be hearing her read aloud. I always love finding a a good narrator!

Glad to hear the narrator’s great! I love this series and was thinking of listening to the audio when I’m ready to reread. You do not understand how excited I am that you loved these.fakesteph recently posted…Threats of Sky and Sea by Jennifer Ellision